SmartRank

How much of your hiring process is done simply because "that's how we've always done it"?

Comfort and complacency shouldn't be reasons to ignore issues. Let's look at another example of that...

Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline (he also invented chlorofluorocarbons or "CFCs") in 1921. We added lead to gasoline because it was an "antiknock agent" which improved the efficiency of vehicles and the performance of the engine. In short, it turned clunky engines into smoothly running engines. Hoorah, right?

Well it turns out lead is a toxic pollutant, particularly for children, and it was polluting the air in towns and cities across the world. Even with concerns about its use, we continued using leaded gasoline for decades. The first clinical studies proved it had toxic impacts on humans in 1969, but it wasn't until 1986 when the first country, Japan, banned it completely. Then the U.S. banned it ten years later in 1996, and Algeria became the last country to ban leaded gasoline in 2021.

Résumés were in full swing in the 1970s as well, just as they are today. Studies have been out for decades about how biased names and résumés are in the screening process, and yet we still use them. You simply need to do a quick Google search to find that screening applicants by reviewing résumés one-by-one is usually the biggest consumer of time for a recruiter. I would argue that reviewing résumés is also the most ineffective way to screen applicants. And just check out social media if you want to see what applicants think about submitting résumés into an ATS in 2023. So the data is there...using résumés to screen applicants is a 50-year old (actually even older than that) process that arguably sucks worse today than it did 50 years ago.

I think we can all agree that getting rid of leaded gasoline was a good idea, and certainly should have been done much earlier in most countries. I also hope we can all agree that getting rid of résumés in the screening process is a FANTASTIC idea. The question is, when it comes to résumés, are you going to be Japan or Algeria?

This is one of the greatest leadership quotes of all time. It's so important because it gets at the very core of which type of leader a person really is.

We count on leaders to take care of their teams and put themselves last. As leaders it's our job to remove obstacles, problem solve, and above all...take action.

If leaders allow their self interests or even self preservation (e.g., not getting fired) to rise above their responsibilities, then they need to be an individual contributor, and NOT a leader.

There are a lot of words people would use to describe a good leader such as; brave, strong, selfless, smart, creative, etc. Those are all accurate descriptions and there are plenty more. Leaders come in all different shapes and sizes with different strengths and weaknesses. But at the end of the day, real leaders need to take action. Being complacent, existing in the status quo when they know there are problems that need to be solved, following what everyone else does (or has done in the past), and choosing inaction as their default decision-making mechanism makes them a sheep, not a lion.

By the way, there is NOTHING wrong with being a sheep...they just shouldn't be in a leadership role!